IF MEMORY SERVES

John Lewis knew how to put a legacy of heroism.

- KELEFA SANNEH

In the early weeks of 2008, as Barack Obama was fighting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination, many Party members felt obliged to pick a side, and to lend their voices to the side they picked. Few of these voices were as powerful as that of John Lewis, a congressman from Georgia and a veteran of the civil-rights movement. Lewis was skeptical of Obama, who was then a first-term senator from Illinois, known less for any particular accomplishment in Washington than for the inspirational speeches he gave. “He is no Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Lewis told the Washington Post, at a time when those speeches were helping Obama eat into Clinton’s once formidable lead in the polls. “I knew Martin Luther King.” King had been Lewis’s mentor, and then his ally; after King’s assassination, Lewis came to be viewed as King’s spiritual and moral heir. But Lewis was also a loyal Democrat, which made him a loyal supporter of the Clintons. “You need more than speech-making,” he said. “You need someone who is prepared to provide bold leadership.”